Volume II Part 21 (2/2)

Every rupee of profit made by an Englishman is lost forever to India.

With us are no retributory superst.i.tions, by which a foundation of charity compensates, through ages, to the poor, for the rapine and injustice of a day. With us no pride erects stately monuments which repair the mischiefs which pride had produced, and which adorn a country out of its own spoils. England has erected no churches, no hospitals,[56] no palaces, no schools; England has built no bridges, made no high-roads, cut no navigations, dug out no reservoirs. Every other conqueror of every other description has left some monument, either of state or beneficence, behind him. Were we to be driven out of India this day, nothing would remain to tell that it had been possessed, during the inglorious period of our dominion, by anything better than the orang-outang or the tiger.

There is nothing in the boys we send to India worse than in the boys whom we are whipping at school, or that we see trailing a pike or bending over a desk at home. But as English youth in India drink the intoxicating draught of authority and dominion before their heads are able to bear it, and as they are full grown in fortune long before they are ripe in principle, neither Nature nor reason have any opportunity to exert themselves for remedy of the excesses of their premature power.

The consequences of their conduct, which in good minds (and many of theirs are probably such) might produce penitence or amendment, are unable to pursue the rapidity of their flight. Their prey is lodged in England; and the cries of India are given to seas and winds, to be blown about, in every breaking up of the monsoon, over a remote and unhearing ocean. In India all the vices operate by which sudden fortune is acquired: in England are often displayed, by the same persons, the virtues which dispense hereditary wealth. Arrived in England, the destroyers of the n.o.bility and gentry of a whole kingdom will find the best company in this nation at a board of elegance and hospitality. Here the manufacturer and husbandman will bless the just and punctual hand that in India has torn the cloth from the loom, or wrested the scanty portion of rice and salt from the peasant of Bengal, or wrung from him the very opium in which he forgot his oppressions and his oppressor.

They marry into your families; they enter into your senate; they ease your estates by loans; they raise their value by demand; they cherish and protect your relations which lie heavy on your patronage; and there is scarcely an house in the kingdom that does not feel some concern and interest that makes all reform of our Eastern government appear officious and disgusting, and, on the whole, a most discouraging attempt. In such an attempt you hurt those who are able to return kindness or to resent injury. If you succeed, you save those who cannot so much as give you thanks. All these things show the difficulty of the work we have on hand: but they show its necessity, too. Our Indian government is in its best state a grievance. It is necessary that the correctives should be uncommonly vigorous, and the work of men sanguine, warm, and even impa.s.sioned in the cause. But it is an arduous thing to plead against abuses of a power which originates from your own country, and affects those whom we are used to consider as strangers.

I shall certainly endeavor to modulate myself to this temper; though I am sensible that a cold style of describing actions, which appear to me in a very affecting light, is equally contrary to the justice due to the people and to all genuine human feelings about them. I ask pardon of truth and Nature for this compliance. But I shall be very sparing of epithets either to persons or things. It has been said, (and, with regard to one of them, with truth,) that Tacitus and Machiavel, by their cold way of relating enormous crimes, have in some sort appeared not to disapprove them; that they seem a sort of professors of the art of tyranny; and that they corrupt the minds of their readers by not expressing the detestation and horror that naturally belong to horrible and detestable proceedings. But we are in general, Sir, so little acquainted with Indian details, the instruments of oppression under which the people suffer are so hard to be understood, and even the very names of the sufferers are so uncouth and strange to our ears, that it is very difficult for our sympathy to fix upon these objects. I am sure that some of us have come down stairs from the committee-room with impressions on our minds which to us were the inevitable results of our discoveries, yet, if we should venture to express ourselves in the proper language of our sentiments to other gentlemen not at all prepared to enter into the cause of them, nothing could appear more harsh and dissonant, more violent and unaccountable, than our language and behavior. All these circ.u.mstances are not, I confess, very favorable to the idea of our attempting to govern India at all. But there we are; there we are placed by the Sovereign Disposer; and we must do the best we can in our situation. The situation of man is the preceptor of his duty.

Upon the plan which I laid down, and to which I beg leave to return, I was considering the conduct of the Company to those nations which are indirectly subject to their authority. The most considerable of the dependent princes is the Nabob of Oude. My right honorable friend,[57]

to whom we owe the remedial bills on your table, has already pointed out to you, in one of the reports, the condition of that prince, and as it stood in the time he alluded to. I shall only add a few circ.u.mstances that may tend to awaken some sense of the manner in which the condition of the people is affected by that of the prince, and involved in it,--and to show you, that, when we talk of the sufferings of princes, we do not lament the oppression of individuals,--and that in these cases the high and the low suffer together.

In the year 1779, the Nabob of Oude represented, through the British resident at his court, that the number of Company's troops stationed in his dominions was a main cause of his distress,--and that all those which he was not bound by treaty to maintain should be withdrawn, as they had greatly diminished his revenue and impoverished his country. I will read you, if you please, a few extracts from these representations.

He states, ”that the country and cultivation are abandoned, and this year in particular, from the excessive drought of the season, deductions of many lacs having been allowed to the farmers, who are still left unsatisfied”; and then he proceeds with a long detail of his own distress, and that of his family and all his dependants; and adds, ”that the new-raised brigade is not only quite useless to my government, but is, moreover, the cause of much loss both in revenues and customs. The detached body of troops under European officers bring nothing _but confusion to the affairs of my government, and are entirely their own masters_.” Mr. Middleton, Mr. Hastings's confidential resident, vouches for the truth of this representation in its fullest extent. ”I am concerned to confess that there is too good ground for this plea. _The misfortune hat been general throughout the whole of the vizier's_ [the Nabob of Oude] _dominions_, obvious to everybody; and so _fatal_ have been its consequences, that no person of either credit or character would enter into engagements with government for farming the country.”

He then proceeds to give strong instances of the general calamity, and its effects.

It was now to be seen what steps the Governor-General and Council took for the relief of this distressed country, long laboring under the vexations of men, and now stricken by the hand of G.o.d. The case of a general famine is known to relax the severity even of the most rigorous government.--Mr. Hastings does not deny or show the least doubt of the fact. The representation is humble, and almost abject. On this representation from a great prince of the distress of his subjects, Mr.

Hastings falls into a violent pa.s.sion,--such as (it seems) would be unjustifiable in any one who speaks of any part of _his_ conduct. He declares ”that the _demands_, the _tone_ in which they were a.s.serted, and the _season_ in which they were made, are all equally alarming, and appear to him to require an adequate degree of firmness in this board in _opposition_ to them.” He proceeds to deal out very unreserved language on the person and character of the Nabob and his ministers. He declares, that, in a division between him and the Nabob, ”_the strongest must decide_.” With regard to the urgent and instant necessity from the failure of the crops, he says, ”that _perhaps_ expedients _may be found_ for affording a _gradual_ relief from the burden of which he so heavily complains, and it shall be my endeavor to seek them out”: and lest he should be suspected of too much haste to alleviate sufferings and to remove violence, he says, ”that these must be _gradually_ applied, and their complete _effect_ may be _distant_; and this, I conceive, _is all_ he can claim of right.”

This complete effect of his lenity is distant indeed. Rejecting this demand, (as he calls the Nabob's abject supplication,) he attributes it, as he usually does all things of the kind, to the division in their government, and says, ”This is a powerful motive with _me_ (however inclined I might be, _upon any other occasion_, to yield to some _part_ of his demand) to give them an _absolute and unconditional refusal_ upon the present,--and even _to bring to punishment, if my influence can produce that effect, those incendiaries who have endeavored to make themselves the instruments of division between us_.”

Here, Sir, is much heat and pa.s.sion,--but no more consideration of the distress of the country, from a failure of the means of subsistence, and (if possible) the worse evil of an useless and licentious soldiery, than if they were the most contemptible of all trifles. A letter is written, in consequence, in such a style of lofty despotism as I believe has. .h.i.therto been unexampled and unheard of in the records of the East. The troops were continued. The _gradual_ relief, whose effect was to be so _distant_, has _never_ been substantially and beneficially applied,--and the country is ruined.

Mr. Hastings, two years after, when it was too late, saw the absolute necessity of a removal of the intolerable grievance of this licentious soldiery, which, under pretence of defending it, held the country under military execution. A new treaty and arrangement, according to the pleasure of Mr. Hastings, took place; and this new treaty was broken in the old manner, in every essential article. The soldiery were again sent, and again set loose. The effect of all his manoeuvres, from which it seems he was sanguine enough to entertain hopes, upon the state of the country, he himself informs us,--”The event has proved the _reverse_ of these hopes, and _acc.u.mulation of distress, debas.e.m.e.nt, and dissatisfaction_ to the Nabob, and _disappointment and disgrace to me_.--Every measure [which he had himself proposed] has been _so conducted_ as to give him cause of displeasure. There are no officers established by which his affairs could be regularly conducted: mean, incapable, and indigent men have been appointed. A number of the districts without authority, and without the means of personal protection; some of them have been murdered by the zemindars, and those zemindars, instead of punishment, have been permitted to retain their zemindaries, with independent authority; _all_ the other zemindars suffered to rise up in rebellion, and to insult the authority of the sircar, without any attempt made to suppress them; and the Company's debt, instead of being discharged by the a.s.signments and extraordinary sources of money provided for that _purpose, is likely to exceed even the amount at which it stood at the time in which the arrangement with his Excellency was concluded_.” The House will smile at the resource on which the Directors take credit as such a certainty in their curious account.

This is Mr. Hastings's own narrative of the effects of his own settlement. This is the state of the country which we have been told is in perfect peace and order; and, what is curious, he informs us, that _every part of this was foretold to him in the order and manner in which it happened_, at the very time he made his arrangement of men and measures.

The invariable course of the Company's policy is this: either they set up some prince too odious to maintain himself without the necessity of their a.s.sistance, or they soon render him odious by making him the instrument of their government. In that case troops are bountifully sent to him to maintain his authority. That he should have no want of a.s.sistance, a civil gentleman, called a Resident, is kept at his court, who, under pretence of providing duly for the pay of these troops, gets a.s.signments on the revenue into his hands. Under his provident management, debts soon acc.u.mulate; new a.s.signments are made for these debts; until, step by step, the whole revenue, and with it the whole power of the country, is delivered into his hands. The military do not behold without a virtuous emulation the moderate gains of the civil department. They feel that in a country driven to habitual rebellion by the civil government the military is necessary; and they will not permit their services to go unrewarded. Tracts of country are delivered over to their discretion. Then it is found proper to convert their commanding officers into farmers of revenue. Thus, between the well-paid civil and well-rewarded military establishment, the situation of the natives may be easily conjectured. The authority of the regular and lawful government is everywhere and in every point extinguished. Disorders and violences arise; they are repressed by other disorders and other violences. Wherever the collectors of the revenue and the farming colonels and majors move, ruin is about them, rebellion before and behind them. The people in crowds fly out of the country; and the frontier is guarded by lines of troops, not to exclude an enemy, but to prevent the escape of the inhabitants.

By these means, in the course of not more than four or five years, this once opulent and flouris.h.i.+ng country, which, by the accounts given in the Bengal consultations, yielded more than three crore of sicca rupees, that is, above three millions sterling, annually, is reduced, as far as I can discover, in a matter purposely involved in the utmost perplexity, to less than one million three hundred thousand pounds, and that exacted by every mode of rigor that can be devised. To complete the business, most of the wretched remnants of this revenue are mortgaged, and delivered into the hands of the usurers at Benares (for there alone are to be found some lingering remains of the ancient wealth of these regions) at an interest of near _thirty per cent per annum_.

The revenues in this manner failing, they seized upon the estates of every person of eminence in the country, and, under the name of _resumption_, confiscated their property. I wish, Sir, to be understood universally and literally, when I a.s.sert that there is not left one man of property and substance for his rank in the whole of these provinces, in provinces which are nearly the extent of England and Wales taken together: not one landholder, not one banker, not one merchant, not one even of those who usually perish last, the _ultimum moriens_ in a ruined state, not one farmer of revenue.

One country for a while remained, which stood as an island in the midst of the grand waste of the Company's dominion. My right honorable friend, in his admirable speech on moving the bill, just touched the situation, the offences, and the punishment of a native prince, called Fizulla Khan. This man, by policy and force, had protected himself from the general extirpation of the Rohilla chiefs. He was secured (if that were any security) by a treaty. It was stated to you, as it was stated by the enemies of that unfortunate man, ”that the whole of his country _is_ what the whole country of the Rohillas _was_, cultivated like a garden, without one neglected spot in it.” Another accuser says,--”Fyzoolah Khan, though a bad soldier, [that is the true source of his misfortune,]

has approved himself a good aumil,--having, it is supposed, in the course of a few years, at least _doubled_ the population and revenue of his country.” In another part of the correspondence he is charged with making his country an asylum for the oppressed peasants who fly from the territories of Oude. The improvement of his revenue, arising from this single crime, (which Mr. Hastings considers as tantamount to treason,) is stated at an hundred and fifty thousand pounds a year.

Dr. Swift somewhere says, that he who could make two blades of gra.s.s grow where but one grew before was a greater benefactor to the human race than all the politicians that ever existed. This prince, who would have been deified by antiquity, who would have been ranked with Osiris, and Bacchus, and Ceres, and the divinities most propitious to men, was, for those very merits, by name attacked by the Company's government, as a cheat, a robber, a traitor. In the same breath in which he was accused as a rebel, he was ordered at once to furnish five thousand horse. On delay, or (according to the technical phrase, when any remonstrance is made to them) ”_on evasion_,” he was declared a violator of treaties, and everything he had was to be taken from him. Not one word, however, of horse in this treaty.

The territory of this Fizulla Khan, Mr. Speaker, is less than the County of Norfolk. It is an inland country, full seven hundred miles from any seaport, and not distinguished for any one considerable branch of manufacture whatsoever. From this territory several very considerable sums had at several times been paid to the British resident. The demand of cavalry, without a shadow or decent pretext of right, amounted to three hundred thousand a year more, at the lowest computation; and it is stated, by the last person sent to negotiate, as a demand of little use, if it could be complied with,--but that the compliance was impossible, as it amounted to more than his territories could supply, if there had been no other demand upon him. Three hundred thousand pounds a year from an inland country not so large as Norfolk!

The thing most extraordinary was to hear the culprit defend himself from the imputation of his virtues, as if they had been the blackest offences. He extenuated the superior cultivation of his country. He denied its population. He endeavored to prove that he had often sent back the poor peasant that sought shelter with him.--I can make no observation on this.

After a variety of extortions and vexations, too fatiguing to you, too disgusting to me, to go through with, they found ”that they ought to be in a better state to warrant forcible means”; they therefore contented themselves with a gross sum of one hundred and fifty thousand pounds for their present demand. They offered him, indeed, an indemnity from their exactions in future for three hundred thousand pounds more. But he refused to buy their securities,--pleading (probably with truth) his poverty; but if the plea were not founded, in my opinion very wisely: not choosing to deal any more in that dangerous commodity of the Company's faith; and thinking it better to oppose distress and unarmed obstinacy to uncolored exaction than to subject himself to be considered as a cheat, if he should make a treaty in the least beneficial to himself.

Thus they executed an exemplary punishment on Fizulla Khan for the culture of his country. But, conscious that the prevention of evils is the great object of all good regulation, they deprived him of the means of increasing that criminal cultivation in future, by exhausting his coffers; and that the population of his country should no more be a standing reproach and libel on the Company's government, they bound him by a positive engagement not to afford any shelter whatsoever to the farmers and laborers who should seek refuge in his territories from the exactions of the British residents in Oude. When they had done all this effectually, they gave him a full and complete acquittance from all charges of rebellion, or of any intention to rebel, or of his having originally had any interest in, or any means of, rebellion.

These intended rebellions are one of the Company's standing resources.

When money has been thought to be heaped up anywhere, its owners are universally accused of rebellion, until they are acquitted of their money and their treasons at once. The money once taken, all accusation, trial, and punishment ends. It is so settled a resource, that I rather wonder how it comes to be omitted in the Directors' account; but I take it for granted this omission will be supplied in their next edition.

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